‘My Soul Feels Taller’: A Whistle-Blower’s $20 Million Vindication

Patricia Williams, 44, is a single mother of two grown children, as well as a grandmother. She is also a rarity: a whistle-blower who has succeeded in bringing to light abuses at a powerful corporation that wanted to keep them hidden.

On Nov. 17, Ms. Williams won a four-year legal fight against her former employer, Wyndham Vacation Ownership, the nation’s largest time-share operator. A jury hearing her retaliation suit in California state court in San Francisco awarded Ms. Williams $20 million covering her lost earnings and emotional distress, and punitive damages.

“My soul feels taller,” she said in an interview by telephone.

Christopher B. Dolan is the founder of the Dolan Law Firm in San Francisco and one of two lawyers who represented Ms. Williams. “I hope this case sounds an alarm for corporate America,” he said. “Change your behavior — or a jury will change it for you.”

Wyndham officials said the company was considering an appeal, so the final chapter in Ms. Williams’s fight was not known. What we do know: Like most whistle-blowers, she paid a heavy price for identifying improprieties at her company in 2010. Branded a troublemaker, she was fired.

That was only the beginning.

Despite years of experience, Ms. Williams was unable to find work as a sales representative in any field. As the suit dragged on, she and her longtime fiancé broke up. She began drinking heavily, and she said she was so poor that she had to raid her parents’ pantry for food. The only work she could get paid little; her most recent job was as a hostess in a restaurant in Virginia Beach earning $9 an hour.

“It’s been a long battle,” she said. “But I had faith every minute that if I got in front of a jury of 12 unbiased people and an unbiased judge, they would see the truth.”

Declining to talk specifically about the Williams case, Wyndham’s general counsel, Jorge de la Osa, said that the incidents that were alleged to have happened six years ago “are not representative of what we stand for as a company in terms of our values and culture.”

Ms. Williams had worked in the time-share industry for over 15 years when she filed her retaliation suit against Wyndham in 2012. Two years earlier, the company had fired her for complaining about questionable sales tactics she witnessed at the Wyndham Canterbury, an upscale time-share property in downtown San Francisco.

During her tenure there, Ms. Williams told her superiors about an array of dubious activities: Representatives were preying on older time-share owners to get them to increase their holdings and were falsely telling customers that Wyndham would buy back their ownership stakes if they no longer wanted them. She also said that credit card accounts were opened for buyers without their knowledge and approval.

Facts brought out in the case revealed a Wild West sales environment at the Wyndham property. Employees routinely flouted rules and regulations by making oral promises to customers that differed from the terms of the voluminous contracts they signed when making a purchase. Moreover, Wyndham employees charged with policing sales representatives, according to Ms. Williams, were paid based on those representatives’ production, an obvious conflict.

Wyndham’s sales goals for employees were impossible to meet if representatives adhered to the company’s policies and regulations governing time-share sales, Robert Parker, a former sales executive, testified in depositions. When sales at the Canterbury lagged, he explained, something known as “TAFT days” came into play.

“TAFT is the acronym for ‘tell them any frigging thing,’” Mr. Parker testified. “In other words, it didn’t matter what you said. We need business. Today’s your day. Just tell them whatever you got to tell them. That’s what TAFT is.”

Mr. Parker did not reply to an email seeking comment.

What would happen if a customer complained? Typically, a company official would ask the sales representative who worked with the customer about the facts outlined in the complaint. The representative would inevitably dispute the customer’s report, and the complaint would be closed, labeled unsubstantiated, the former sales executive testified.

Another executive, an area vice president who oversaw about $300 million in annual sales at the company was asked how many complaints he had seen while working for Wyndham. Tens of thousands, he testified.

Like many companies, Wyndham set up a phone number that employees could use to alert management to problems. But after Ms. Williams reported abuses on what’s known as “the Wyntegrity line,” her bosses began retaliating. According to testimony from a former high-level Wyndham executive, Ms. Williams was “not supporting the agenda there, was not being part of the system.”

After Wyndham fired Ms. Williams, she encountered further obstacles. Initially, for example, four other Wyndham colleagues joined her in suing the company. But Wyndham struck financial settlements with them one by one and they bowed out of the suit. After settling, one former colleague turned on Ms. Williams, testifying against her on behalf of Wyndham at the trial. The jury did not appear to find the testimony credible, Ms. Williams’s lawyers said.

Wyndham offered to settle with Ms. Williams. But she said she would agree to such a deal only if the company promised to change its policies. For example, she demanded that the company record on video all sales encounters its representatives had with customers and present buyers with a simple form that would make clear what they were agreeing to in their contracts.

The company declined to make the policy changes, Ms. Williams said.

“My colleagues were very angry that I decided to pursue trial instead of settlement,” Ms. Williams said. “This was something they weren’t interested in exposing.”

Neither, of course, was the company. Anne Costin, of Costin Law in San Francisco, also represented Ms. Williams. She said Wyndham “did everything possible to hide the damning evidence that this jury saw.” Even during the trial, she added, “Wyndham and its lawyers continued to refuse to accept any responsibility.”

In recent years, however, Wyndham has instituted some compliance changes along the lines Ms. Williams suggested. Videos now record the closing process of sales that account for 78 percent of revenues at the company, and a form specifying a customer’s purchase is part of each sale, Mr. de la Osa, the Wyndham general counsel, said.

Compliance has been subject to “a lot of enhancements over the last three to four years,” Mr. de la Osa added. “We’ve had compliance all along but we continuously evolve.”

Would Ms. Williams do it again, knowing what she knows now about the perils of whistle-blowing?

Definitely, she said. “Protecting these vulnerable elderly owners,” she added. “That was the main reason I was able to continue.”